Structuring a VC Presentation

Q: What are the most important areas to cover when making a VC presentation in a
limited amount of time?

In addition to telling a compelling story about how your venture came about and
covering the backgrounds of your management team, I would suggest covering the ten points
(or as many as time permits) of Business Plan writing that Mario Morino discussed during a
Coffee&DoughNets in February. The full transcript can be found at http://netpreneur.org/events/doughnets/10points/default.html.
The main points are:

What is the market opportunity in the market niche?

What is your solution to the market need?

How big or small is the market opportunity? How is it moving?

What is your economic model? How and when are you going to make a profit?

How are you going to reach your market and sell to your buyer?

What's the competition? How will it change? Why are you better?

What's your differentiation and how will you maintain it?

How will you execute? How will you grow and manage your business?

What are the risks? In other words, what might stop you?

Why are you going to succeed? Why you?

[Clarence Wooten, Jr., cwooten@MSTUDIOS.COM]

Present the opportunity that your business would offer them. Gather some background
information on the people to whom you'll be presenting. That should help you tailor
portions of your presentation to be more or less technical, etc. [David J. Simonetti,
djs@projix.com]

You'll find some good information on presenting to VCs in the transcript from a recent
Netpreneur event in which five netpreneurs discussed their first funding experiences.
Check out: http://netpreneur.org/funding/firstfunding

Pick up a copy of David Gladstone's book, "Venture Capital Handbook-An
Entrepreneur's Guide to Obtaining Capital to Start a Business, Buy a Business or Expand an
Existing Business." David Gladstone is a highly respected "dean" of VC
formerly Chairman of Allied Capital. The book takes the perspective of what a VC wants to
know about a business plan. Available at Borders or Amazon.com. [George Atkinson,
gatkinson@tradecompass.com]